


These Words are Knives

by Hinn_Raven



Series: Bitter Pill [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Bad Future, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6279280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: During the war, Tucker goes missing. Ten years later, he shows back up again. Chorus is on it’s last leg. His friends are either dead, captured or scattered. And Tucker is still Tucker.</p><p>This Installment: They lose a lot over the years. This is how they lose Epsilon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Words are Knives

**Author's Note:**

> More Bitter Pill! Are we enjoying this too much? Probably. Sorry guys.

 

 

It ends at the Tower of the Purge.

Or maybe that’s the wrong way to put it.

Maybe it ends when they learn about the Purge. They’d all sat upright, and they’d known just _how close_ it was all to being for nothing. All the deaths, all the losses, about to end with the turn of a key. (Which, as Caboose reminds them all, is also a sword.)

Or maybe it ends when they see Felix saunter across the battlefield, a familiar plasma blade in his grip, his laughter ringing over the radios as they all see it and know what it means.

It means Tucker is dead. It means that their desperate hopes were for nothing. It means that they had ripped apart ever Charon prison they could find in pursuit of hopeless dreams. Wash loses his eye that day, and as Carolina sits next to him in the infirmary, while Grey chatters meaninglessly about cyborg eyes, she has to hold back tears.

Or maybe it even ends that day so early on, when they lose Tucker, when everything shatters into a thousand pieces. They’ve suffered losses before, but this one’s so intense, so personal. Carolina knows it’s wrong to think of him as their first significant loss, when the list of the dead is too long for the memorial wall, but it feels like losing CT did, all those years ago.

The beginning of the end.

But anyways.

It all leads to the Purge, at the end of the day.

They all fight. Every last soldier they can drag up leaves their hidden bunkers, all the cells that they can spare come together for the first time in years, Fed and Rebel alike, all of them desperate to stay alive. They form layers and layers of human barriers between the mercenaries and the tower, and Felix and Locus slaughter so many people as they try to make their way into the temple.

Destroying the tower is the only solution, and Carolina wants to laugh as she hears Felix’s cry of fury and Locus’s growl as Simmons destroys it. The Reds had been given all the explosives they can get their hands on, and they’ve made good use of the time they’d bought for them. She hears the others cheering over the radios, and she can’t help but smile. It’s their first victory in so long, and it tastes sweet.

 _Watch your six!_ Epsilon cries out in her head, and she spins, but she’s not fast enough.

It always seems like she’s too slow when she needs speed the most.

Locus’s shot rips through her shoulder, and she screams as her clavicle shatters, the bullet ignoring the layers of armor that should be protecting her.

“Complete the secondary objective,” Locus growls, and Carolina lies on the ground in shock, her eyes desperately searching for the others.

The others hear her over the radio, and they’re yelling, trying to find her, trying to get a lock on her position. But Felix will kill her before they do. She knows this in her bones.

Epsilon is running the healing unit, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, as well as looking for options.

Felix is there, and he knocks her down again with laughable ease. The sword isn’t out, and Carolina spares a moment to be glad that he’s not going to kill her with it. It’s stupid, but she knows Tucker would never forgive himself for that.

Thinking of Tucker is a bad idea. She tries to move again, and nearly screams in pain when she moves her arm.

He removes her helmet.

There’s a moment of terrifying clarity, and she’s not sure if it’s her own realization or Epsilon’s that shakes her to her very core.

_He wants Epsilon._

_He’ll rip me out of you!_

_Not going to happen!_ She promises her brother, desperately pushing Felix away as best she can, but she’s bleeding out and injured, and Felix shoots her in the other shoulder even as he grabs her head and lifts it up so he can get at the port at the back of her head.

 ** _Carolina_** _!_ Epsilon screams in her head, and she punches Felix in the helmet, despite how her shoulder screams.

_I’m not losing you!_

**_Carolina!_ **

Time slows down.

Epsilon always has enough time. And for a single moment, he pulls her with him, slowing her mind down to his speed.

“The others won’t be here in time,” he says, shoulders slumping. Delta, Theta, the others are all there, and they’re crying and screaming, knowing what’s going to happen.

“I’ll get you back,” Carolina promises, reaching out and trying to take his hand. But even here, in her own mind, he’s a hologram, and she’s denied that.

Epsilon always has enough time.

Somehow, they still don’t have enough time to say everything that needs to be said.

“Church,” she whispers, in the second between Felix finding her implants and him removing the chip.

_Give them hell for me, okay sis?_

Carolina screams as, for the second time in her life, her AI is ripped out of her head.

“Gotcha!” Felix aims his pistol at her face, and she realizes she’s about to die. _I’m sorry Church_.

“Three points, cockbite!” A grenade flies through the air, and she knows only one person who could make that shot.

 _Donut_.

The Reds are here, the cavalry is here, and they’re shouting and shooting, and Wash is there, hauling her to her feet.

“Don’t let them get away!” She yells. “They have Epsilon!”

Her feet don’t want to move, she feels like she’s just fallen again, but this time she doesn’t have the excuse of broken bones or locked armor. This time she needs to keep moving, because _they have her brother_.

She stumbles, and Donut is the one to catch her this time, because Wash is charging forward, going right for Felix, and Carolina feels tears in the corners of her eyes, which she can’t even brush away—all of her limbs feel as if they’ve been filled with lead. Every step is labored.

Grif pushes her helmet back onto her head for her.

“We’ll get him back,” Donut promises her.

She wants to believe him.

She keeps believing him until she looks across the field, and sees an AI fragment they will call Despair. She watches it kill Caboose, and she screams, and tries to kill it, and she fails. Again.  

And then she knows that her brother is as good as dead.

But now, she wants to believe, and she leans against Donut, and lets him help her into the warthog.


End file.
